Would you choose a career in Buddhist Studies

Though Buddhism originated in India and therefore unfold across the Asian continent, the discipline has no longer received much consideration from Indian scholars

Buddhist Studies is an interdisciplinary field and if you are contemplating this direction, you must be completely dedicated to pursuing a sophisticated degree in this field. It is a large field this is studied through analytical vantage points of historical past, sociology, philology, philosophy, non secular research, and cultural research.

Much towards the perception of this being part of non secular research, the curriculum involves finding out Buddhist Economics, finding out language assets of Buddhism similar to Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese and so forth. One can concentrate on this sort of spaces similar to Tibetan research, which focuses handiest on the Tibetan Buddhism and language, Tibetan History and Tibetan geography, on the postgraduate level.

Though Buddhism originated in India and therefore unfold to maximum parts of Asia, the discipline in lecturers has no longer received much consideration but. Students who pursue this discipline are basically motivated by way of their non-public interest and curiosity as this topic does no longer be offering 'economically viable' activity choices. Students either get into Buddhist research or academia while a couple of find jobs in the tourism sector, say experts.

Last yr, of 237 seats available in MA in Buddhist Studies in Delhi University (DU), handiest 125 seats was stuffed. "Not many students could clear the national entrance exam, the eligibility for which is a bachelor's in any discipline," says KTS Sarao, professor, Buddhist Studies, DU. He provides that to fill these seats, scholars who did not rating neatly were also admitted.

"Buddhist Studies is not a very popular subject at the undergraduation level due to which very few programmes on the subject are available after class XII. It is only taught as one of the subjects in BA Programme in two colleges of DU, Kalindi and Satyawati (Evening)," he says.

Interestingly, Buddhist Studies programmes at KJ Somaiya Centre for Buddhist Studies, Mumbai University, has noticed an upward swing in enrolment up to now 5 years. Most scholars are fans of Buddhism, retired execs and housewives who have a tendency in opposition to Buddhist Studies.

"Buddhist Studies is a rich cultural area that explores Buddhism through various approaches and its impact on many local cultures and traditions. It promotes social engagement of conflicting ideas and teaches students to be sharp debaters and question things around them," says Supriya Rai, who heads the department. She took up Buddhist Studies after a ten-year-long career in the corporate world.

These disciplines will not be economically viable but are essential. "Humanity would be poorer without these texts," says Rai. Although the West has an energetic community of Buddist scholars and plenty of top league institutes similar to Harvard and Oxford that offer a direction in this, it remains a niche space in India.

"The study of this subject teaches human values, self-discipline, sharing, compassion, empathy, love, sacrifice etc. A society can become a happy society only when alongside the policies to meet the basic needs of people, our policymakers ingrain a value system based in Vedanta and Buddhism," says Sarao, while emphasising on the need to change the outlook of the policymakers to make the subject more widespread.